Comments Locked

50 Comments

Back to Article

  • pancakes - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link

    I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out why my old laptops usb drivers were failing to install!
  • sparkuss - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link

    I just did a new build two weeks ago and tonite I got a new Activate Windows 7 prompt that I was sure I had already done.
  • Jay77 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Me too, and uninstalling the patch doesn't make the prompt go away.
  • jmichon1 - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link

    Uninstalling kb3004394 immediately halted the 'genuine' prompts. It also allowed my Windows Troubleshooting to operate, which had not been working at all....... whew...... thought I was nuts here!!
  • bnjohanson - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link

    Yet another reason to avoid AMD/ATI like the plague ? How about something a little more convincing like bolstering the dangers of ingesting Strychnine by adding another caveat to its label.

    Not unlike the laughably obvious reasoning to not get suckered into substituting beef for rat poison to save a little money on your burger, so to is buying AMD-anything to support a device more complex than a calculator watch...
  • misuspita - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link

    Yes, a perfect fanboy response. Did ATI killed your mother or something? Did AMD murdered your cute dog with a rusty knife??

    How about the reading skills? Are they necessary for... you know... reading?
    the update prevents the installation of new graphics drivers on affected systems, with both AMD and _NVIDIA_ drivers refusing to install
    Did you see the N word there?

    Sheesh...
  • bnjohanson - Monday, December 15, 2014 - link

    Rhetorical Question of the Day:

    How long will it take; how easy is it to force an outgassing/arm-waving response from the pathetically insecure AMD blue-light special community ?

    LOL
  • backbydemand - Monday, December 15, 2014 - link

    There is a word for people like you, I really want to say Troll or Retard, but I fear that genuine Trolls or Retards may be offended by the association.

    MS produced an update that broke something, for both AMD and NVidia

    AMD brought it to our attention, saving hassle for not only their own customers but the blindly oblivious NVidia customers

    Where exactly were the NVidia technical team, where is their public safety message? Never mind, BACK UNDER YOUR BRIDGE - BEGONE TROLL!!!
  • retrospooty - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link

    So MS releases yet another bug to their absolutely ridiculous update process and you find it as a reason to avoid AMD, even though it's not an AMD issue and it affects Nvidia GPU cards (and I assume other cards as well).

    Okeedokee. /s
  • close - Monday, December 15, 2014 - link

    Due to this patch he also vowed never to read the whole text and to jump directly to (his poorly founded) conclusions. Also never to admit that such rant is worthless but instead try to look like a winner after he enters the pissing contest but only manages to wet the pants. :)
  • K_Space - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link

    You do MS own software is having similar issues thanks to the aforementioned update from MS? Troubleshooter you are not.
  • pol098 - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link

    Regardless of this update issue, the balance between AMD and Intel on performance, electrical power, and value for money has been oscillating, with AMD less advantageous than it has been. One issue that has been an absolute decider for me is that inexpensive AMD processors and their desktop motherboards fully support ECC RAM (unbuffered, not registered; you can't use server memory); for some reason Intel has stopped supporting ECC for desktop computers (this was supported in the past, then discontinued; I had a modest Pentium some years back that had it).
  • umadrabbit - Sunday, December 14, 2014 - link

    pol - what did any of that have to do with the article on hand?

    That and I won't get into the "electrical power" stuff again. If €3 a month is too much for You then You need to stay away from x86 CPU's all together and pick an ARM route.
  • Antikapitalista - Sunday, December 14, 2014 - link

    Hey, bloody moron, come back when you have learned to read!

    AMD/ATI (apparently) *discovered* the issue, but NVIDIA drivers are affected as well, so if you want to avoid them, what will you be using?? Crappy Intel?? ROTFL!!!
    (Because anything else from Intel (as a possible alternative) is crap, except the respectable Xeon Phi (Knights Corner)).
  • prime2515103 - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link

    I ran into this issue while trying to install AMD's 14.12 driver. I was getting pretty upset with AMD until I remembered I had installed Windows updates earlier that day.

    Tip for AMD: Don't release a driver on patch Tuesday! I would wait at least two weeks.
  • alacard - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Haha, but in two weeks they'd be like two more patch Tuesdays during that time.

    Reminds me of the old tavern signs: free beer tomorrow.
  • close - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    One Patch Tuesday every month. :)
  • alacard - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit, i figured there were four. ^_^
  • zero2dash - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    I don't have the patch (because I do not automatically install updates), and I still had issues getting 14.12 installed last night. BSOD'd my PC at least 3 times. Eventually taking out a GPU (leaving a single) and running DDU several times with several reboots and Safe Mode attempts/trials got me through the driver installation. Hooked back up card #2, re-enabled CF, (tested both cards individually in FurMark just to verify that I didn't suddenly have a bad card), and haven't had any issues since.

    I think there are issues with 14.12 on it's own, but now apparently they're compounded by this stupid Windows update as well. Again though, stuff like this is why I check for updates only (and then install them when I want to).
  • cbuchach - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    My Mediacenter stopped working on Wednesday with an old AMD/ATI graphics card. I was getting weird graphics card warnings. I tried re installing Catalyst but the driver failed to install. I tried uninstalling but then got a nasty BSOD that I ultimately have fixed. This must be the issue. Thanks MS/AMD for wasting hours of my time.
  • cbuchach - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Yes the MS update was the issue. I uninstalled it and re installed the Catalyst software and now the driver can successfully load. What a disaster and huge waste of time and money.....
  • optimus1883 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Same issue and result here, it was very confusing since I have been changing a few things on my HTPC recently.
  • Vault76 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Both of my Windows Media Center PCs stopped working this week and it has been driving me crazy. I'm glad this was posted. One has an Nvidia card and one has an AMD card though. Both are having Playready issues on encrypted channels and "display driver errors" on clear channels. I'm not sure what the issue is yet but it seems like too much of a coincidence that they both stopped working this week.
  • aodxxl - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    The update also Screws with Autocad 2010 . After the update the program refused to start and gave me allot of headaches untill i read about ths update.
  • ssddaydream - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    This update also kills the ability to install any other Windows updates after it, causing any new update to fail. I reformatted my machine, and alas, ran into the same thing after installing the updates. I only figured it out because of some forum member on some site posting about the error.
    Definitely lost some sleep to this one...
  • yannigr2 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    If drivers from both AMD and Nvidia are not installing and other issues are reported, why the hell is AMD's name on the title? Don't you know that putting AMD's name in the title gives the impression that
    "Oh look! AMD's drivers problems again. HAHAHA".

    Stop creating bad image for this company for no reasons. You should have the opposite attitude except if you hope for monopolies in the future.
    My God. We had Ubisoft, now we have Anandtech too...
  • yannigr2 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    And this title comes after AMD's Omega drivers where published. Coincidence? Sure....
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    This literally came at the request of AMD, who asked that we inform our users about this. So I am giving them source credit where they are due.
  • yannigr2 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    In that case I own you an apology.
    I am sorry for my comments.

    As a second comment I would have to say that they are morons. I have to give them credit for been honest and thinking their customers, but they are morons when they put their name next to a Microsoft's problem voluntarily.
  • prime2515103 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    They did it because of the driver being released on patch Tuesday. Everyone was blaming AMD for a bad driving when it had nothing to do with the quality of the driver (this problem effects all drivers, not just AMD, among other things [that involve root certificates]).
  • jak3676 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Honestly, I probably would have ignored the post other than I saw it had something to do with AMD. I had been fighting my system trying to get the latest display drivers updated. The whole thing kept hanging. I'm an AMD fan (have 2 in crossfire), but when their driver fails to install I look to them first. I'm sure I would have found the correct information eventually (that it's a MS problem), but this saves me a few minutes looking up problems on the AMD side.
  • TinHat - Sunday, December 14, 2014 - link

    Hey Ryan,
    after all the hotheads that responded to your goodwill post, do you now think you wish you never bothered. Lol
  • just4U - Monday, December 15, 2014 - link

    lol.. well personally I'd have a secondary account just so I could rag on people for being shmucks!
  • nerbne - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    To me it makes them look better. Oh look they care enough about the customers to inform them of potential issues & a workaround without hiding or making up some lame excuse. That's some top quality customer service right there.
  • yannigr2 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Unfortunately not everybody cares about AMD's customer centric approach. Many take advantage of that to attack the company.
  • YuLeven - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Don't be a prick. AMD and Microsoft are referenced on the title because it's a recommendation of theirs to remove the said update. By the way... do you have any money on AMD to react so bad to a thing like this or you just fancy them?
  • yannigr2 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Don't be a prick yourself moron. Ryan gave an answer and everything is OK. If you are trying to pretend to be his layer, you are a little too late, don't you think? And if you had half a brain you would understand that AMD is vital to everyone, not only to those who have money on them or fancy them.
  • Salvor - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    It sounds like you have some anger management issues. I encourage you to seek help.
  • yannigr2 - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link

    It looks like you are trolling. I encourage you to get a life.
  • milli - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Three computers suddenly lost most of their Microsoft signatures. Two I re-installed already. Thank you update KB3004394 :/
  • Matias - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Don't know if it is related by I had a zotac htpc using amd e350 and samsung 840 evo that after this week's update started faililng to load amd ahci driver while booting win7 x64, could not even enter safe mode. Format....
  • Senti - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    I see now KB3004394 update offered that removes KB3004394 update, haha.
  • Senti - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    KB3024777 update offered*

    Sigh, no edit...
  • richough3 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    KB3004394 would also stop Windows Updates from working properly as well.
  • FrozenGiraffe - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Thank you for this comment. KB3004394 was showing in my update history, but was not in the list of Installed updates. KB3024777 was installed automatically last night and removed it.

    Hope this will stop sudden "Not Genuine Windows" warnings...
  • ExarKun333 - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    Thanks for the article. Just removed the update myself....was wondering why it asked for re-activation a few days ago...:)

    For those that might not know, this is how you remove it, if it has already installed:

    Go to Control Panel
    go into "programs and features"
    then into "view install updates" (at the top left)
    scroll down to the "Microsoft Windows" section.
    uninstall KB3004394
  • toyotabedzrock - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link

    I bet they are using old driver signing certs.
    Windows Server 2003 had a cert issue a month or two ago that required setting the system time back to get updates.
  • notathome - Sunday, December 14, 2014 - link

    This update is making Windows request that it be re activated on my PC. I went to uninstall this update and it is not there. It is listed as having been installed in Windows update, but it is not listed in programs and features. This is driving me nuts. I can not go 5 minutes without it popping up a window asking for it to be activated.
  • djturner83 - Monday, December 15, 2014 - link

    Tryed a clean install of windows 7 the other day and couldnt install amd graphics driver or usb 3. Bastards i thought id somehow fryed the mobo
  • oreobox - Tuesday, December 16, 2014 - link

    Anyone to share the KB3004394 for Windows 7??
    I want to download it but MS drop it from the web...

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now